


wanderers in a distant land (the conquerors of rome)

by Larrant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Dark Crack, M/M, Supervillains, XD, a bit of it, anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Larrant/pseuds/Larrant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren and Hux. The Knight of Ren and the General. Except that this time, we're in a different universe.</p><p>  <i>Superheroes and supervillains. The fight never ends.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	wanderers in a distant land (the conquerors of rome)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bebravenow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bebravenow/gifts).



> Written for the February Kylux exchange, as following the prompt: Kylo/Hux: Supervillain!AU. Hux is the Mad Scientist/Dr Evil type villain, Kylo Ren comes from a family of superheroes but went evil years ago. Together, they make crime!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this ;^^! I wrote this in a hurry towards the end of pinch-hitting season, ack! 2 day deadlines ftw(?) (ahahahahaha) sorry if it jumps everywhere oops
> 
> i will edit this like, soon. it will be better.

 

 

 

 

_"Nobody is a villain in their own story. We're all the heroes of our own stories."_

 

_._

 

_._

 

_._

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **w a n d e r e r s   i n   a   d i s t a n t   l a n d**  

**( t h e   c on q u e r o r s   o f   r o m e )**

 

 

* * *

 

 

His name may not be Skywalker, but Skywalker is the name they all hear when he speaks his name.

 

He is no striking reflection of his father, of his mother, of his uncle. He is black hair and black eyes and hunched shoulders, he is hulking height and quiet words and someone of his own making. But those people are all they see when they gaze at him.

 

He leaves behind that name.

 

He finds himself a mask.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They take him in, and they teach him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He stands, gazing unimpressed at the man who will soon be his partner.

 

There is a ceiling light flickering at the corner of the room- on, off. On, and off. Light, dark. Light, dark. It's irritating, sort of. It casts the man's face into shadow every split second, and it probably does the same for Kylo.

 

The thought crosses Kylo's mind that whoever this is, he must be talented, if this is who Snoke told him to meet.

 

( _he_ is a ginger haired man, almost menacing, not quite broad enough in the shoulders. (not quite menacing). he is someone Kylo should have known about, had he ever turned on a television in the past few years)

 

(unfortunately, he hasn't)

 

(he has heard of the destruction of Siena, the battle of Bern. he has never asked about it, especially)

 

(he does not know, and so carelessly, he asks-)

 

"Your name?"

 

There is, for a moment, silence. The faintest hint of a raised eyebrow, before a reply is given.

 

"Hux."

 

A smile, a flash of white teeth in the cool light. "But they call me the General." 

 

 

* * *

 

 

_There is something staining his hands._

_He looks down, and he sees that it is blood._

_Strange, how warm it is. How he can feel it congealing, thick and sticky and red. It drips from his hands, as if in a never ending stream._

_He waits, unmoving, passive, struck to the spot as the puddle at his feet rises, watches as the blood does not stop falling from his hands, watches as it rises high until he is choking on it, until the blood is filling his nostrils and his eyes and he cannot breathe he cannot breathe he-_

 

wakes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The General. He has no idea where the nickname had come from. Possibly the militaristic outfit Hux liked to wear, with its massive greatcoat and the officer-like uniform. Apparently the greatcoat made him look more intimidating.

 

Pretentious prick.

 

He scoffs scornfully, and the silence echoes back its agreement.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ah, on a different note though. Or well, on a domestic note. Domestic? Right, domestic. It only stands to reason that he never knows how to act.

 

A note: he doesn't do domestic.

 

Another note: apparently he does now.

 

The third note: apparently he does grocery shopping now too.

 

The disclaimer: he has not been in one of these partnerships before, common as he knows they are. He has an excuse.

 

(Heroes can stand alone, they often do. Villains, well. It was always a little _harder_ for them- when wouldn't it be, for people who were hunted by law enforcement, bounty hunters, heroes, etc, etc. Oh and other villains too. It was that villain thing of killing each other.)

 

But well, right, fine, he has like, an excuse that he does not know what he should be doing, and somehow or other he finds himself moving in with Hux. I mean, isn't that what people normally do? He'll find out actually, months later, that no, no it's not- and also find out the inaccurate (but eventually accurate) opinion most have formed about them by then.

 

Hux does not much care though, about Kylo moving in to the base, not except to tell Kylo to keep out of the laboratories and to not kill too many of his minions. He doesn't kill _any_ of Hux's minions (although right fine one time he does almost strangle someone to death), and he only goes into the 'laboratories' once.

  

(he doesn't go in again)

 

He gets to know the others better as well- largely Phasma, who is apparently another minion, who is in charge of other minions. Why they are 'minions' and not employees, he's still uncertain- but maybe it's just that thing as well, though he wonders if people would consider him Snoke's minion.

 

To be honest, he just doesn't like the word. Right, when he finally gets minions of his own, he's just going to call them employees, please and thank you.

 

He also considers, that one time when they run out of Cap'n Crunch and employee (minion) number FN-2000 looks at him dolefully until he rolls his eyes and goes to buy out the supermarket of cereal, how strange it is that super-villainy can also be so... domestic.

 

(he remembers the screaming, malformed creatures (not humans, not humans any more, surely), from that coldly lit corridor down so many levels beneath the ground, how he had decided after approximately two seconds that he might just follow Hux's advice and not go down there any more)

 

(the images don't fit, somehow)

 

(he stops thinking about it)

 

Also, an event, two weeks in: there is a ginger cat rubbing against his ankle and purring. A cat, in the middle of an underground, high-tech, super-villain, _lair_.

 

"Her name is Millicent." He is informed, quite snobbishly later, and Hux's eyes don't ever leave his custom-made, custom-order, prototype, probably very expensive, kind of very shitty Ipad. It's coloured red and black, like his soul.

 

Kylo levels a disbelieving glare at the ginger haired man.

 

Ah, and a fun fact: the colours match, Hux's hair and the cat's fur.

 

There's something on the tip of his tongue, he's not sure what. There's a moment of silence when he tries to figure it out, so when it doesn't come he rolls his eyes instead and asks scathingly. "Not Mr. Bigglesworth?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

"I almost called her that, actually."

 

 

* * *

 

 

He does not understand Hux, sometimes.

 

Wait, a correction; he does not want to.

 

Hux is meant to be dangerous. Hux is meant to be evil. Like. Super villainous evil. Chaotic evil. Maybe neutral evil, on that weird scale everyone keeps talking about.

 

(he does the whole quiz for it once, and he finds himself getting chaotic neutral and a picture of some random character from what- a cartoon? one of those Japanese cartoons?)

 

(he finds himself kind of very irritated, and angry, quite possibly rageful)

 

(chaotic _neutral_?)

 

(he never tells Hux, of course)

 

But. Back, to, Hux. Back to Hux. He _is_ evil. You sort of don't manage to miss that. He has destroyed cities, destroyed millions of lives with nothing but an intake of his breath and an appropriately evil smile as he presses a red button (they're always big, red buttons, usually on some console without any other buttons on it). He's powerful, another tick off the metaphorical list, and even if it is in a different way from Kylo, Kylo can recognize the predator in Hux.

 

And yet, Kylo thinks, privately. And yet he is _soft_. He is soft hands and soft skin and _softness_.

 

Too much softness, for a man like him.

 

It is a contradiction, and Kylo thinks he rather hates it- how- how unnatural it is, how it should not be allowed to happen, that people like him, like them, could be so human. It makes something ugly curl up in his chest, makes something tangled and hateful struggle in his gut, before he remembers that, right, he needs to stop holding the mug in his hand so hard because the last time he did this and forgot to let go something went right through his hand.

 

The thought doesn't leave his mind that he hates it.

 

But he does not hate _him_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Wait no, please- I have a daughter, she's only four-"

 

So loud.

 

He almost rolls his eyes, utterly unimpressed, before he shoots. Avoiding the spray of blood and the strangled scream (he shoots him twice more to ensure that he just _dies_ ), he steps over the corpse without further thought.

 

The cellphone in his pocket rings. He picks it up and looks at the dialler number, gives it a glare- seriously, what is it now- before tapping the green phone button.

 

(his helmet has disappeared again somewhere, probably for more upgrades as he has _not_ agreed to)

 

(the smarmy bastard)

 

"Yeah?" He asks, without preamble.

 

"Millicent's litter needs replacing." The voice from the other end is nonchalant, vaguely sour. But that's just how it always sounds. "And I need you to buy a bag of cat treats."

 

"I'm busy."

 

There's a scoff from the other end, "I can't trust anyone else not to poison her."

 

"Yeah, I'm busy."

 

Hux hangs up.

 

He grumbles to the thin air, and wonders where the closest supermarket is.

 

(he ends up buying like 11 brands of them because he's not sure which one Hux wants and calling him up to ask has resulted more than once in old people winking at him and talking about young love)

 

Oh and- has Kylo mentioned, Millicent, the ginger menace, now apparently enjoys using Kylo's helmet rest as her litterbox.

 

 

* * *

 

 

A question: can dishwashers wash helmets.

 

A decision: he has to try.

 

He resolves, after trying, to destroy Millicent with his own bare hands.

 

But apparently the cat is magical and it senses his killing intent from 500 meters away, because he doesn't even manage to _see_ it for the next week.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Without a mask, he feels vulnerable.

 

(where is it, you ask)

 

(the dishwasher sort of screwed it up)

 

It means that there is air hitting his face, and he cannot hear his breath echoing back to him. It means that people look at him and _see_ him, that there is no barrier between them- it's strange, and unsettling. They stare at him, and then they stare through him, and then they do not stare any more at all because the light has left their eyes and they have slumped down without any breath in their lungs.

 

It's different, somehow. It feels more personal, when they do that, when they look at him. Different, and not in a good way.

 

"I'll finish what you started," he whispers to himself in the night, a prayer, not to a God but to something close to that.

 

His hands are always gloved these days. That way, he does not see the blood.

 

 

* * *

 

 

One time, Hux is shouting at him, angered by something or other- his gloved hands gesturing in the air, face flushed and red- and for once instead of the sight being amusing, something else crosses Kylo's mind instead. And then before he knows himself what's happening, his hands have found the collar of the man's jacket and his lips have found Hux's.

 

If he thinks something, he thinks that at least this is shutting the man up.

 

For approximately fifteen seconds, he drags the air out of Hux's lungs and breathes it back in, and the man's nails are digging into his arm, pulling him closer instead of pushing him back, their tongues are mixing and there is a burn in his chest and a heat- and then, suddenly, nothing. He's stumbling back, Hux has wrenched himself away, and the emptiness between them _aches_.

 

"Don't." Hux tells him. He sounds angry. The anger sounds like disgust. " _Don't_."

 

He leaves, and the next day, they pretend it didn't happen.

 

Kylo never does it again.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"-this is it," the man is almost fanatical as he stares at the console screen, eyes wide and the thrumming excitement almost visible in the air around him- "This is it!"

 

He pivots around, light flashing dramatically from his glasses (the glasses are a nice touch, if kind of strange).

 

(on Hux's glasses: rectangular specs that make him look like a college student instead of a maniacal villain)

 

(Kylo does not tell him that, he likes seeing Hux actually wear them) (even if Hux doesn't realize how young it makes him look)

 

(and even if it means Kylo ends up killing and beheading anyone who sees Hux with his glasses on) (or threatening them with death and beheading at least)

 

"Ren I have it- this is, this is _it_ ," how many times has he said that now. Ah right, and here come the air gesture things. It's amusing now instead of irritating. Vaguely. "I've finally done it."

 

And in case you weren't privy to the past two years of research and study, the Weapon is now complete.

 

Also, that's its name. 'The Weapon'.

 

If Hux didn't look so proud and/or happy with himself, Kylo might be laughing at him right now. What was it with supervillains and scientists and the most stupid names for things. And yes he's going to use 'stupid', because it really _is_.

 

(if Hux can call his sword stupid then he can call Hux's weapon stupid)

 

But instead of being able to say that, Hux looks at him, eyes bright and glowing (it might just be the glow from the lights but seriously they look like they're glowing and ahah there goes another part of Kylo's heart right there)- for once Hux hasn't realized this is _Kylo Ren_ he's ranting to, the person he _never_ rants any of his science to. Like, the person he'd usually _die_ before ranting his inventions to.

 

So. Kylo can't really say anything, can he?

 

He just nods instead, looks appropriately (un)impressed, and hopes that's enough not to derail the man's enthusiasm.

 

It isn't, thankfully.

 

Two hours later, he regrets ever not saying anything.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He is meant to be strong, that's what he reminds himself.

 

He is meant to be, well, evil. And he is.

 

In fact he's a supervillain. The evil should be like, there anyway. Included in the package.

 

But he stares at Han Solo- at no, he stares at his father. His father. Father. He looks so old, and the years have not been so kind. He looks so _frail_. And Kylo doesn't think he can do this.

 

"I know what I have to do," he breathes, a statement, except that it's a plea, "But I don't know if I have the strength to do it."

 

Maybe it's just a confession. The confession from a sinner to his God.

 

Except God probably hates him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Everything falls apart.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"What's wrong?" Hux asks him, and it is a foolish question, really.

 

His greatcoat is gone, and Kylo sees how his shoulders are so slim without them, how much of him is just skin and bone hidden by the folds of heavy gaberwool.

 

For a moment he thinks that the General here looks so fragile. Breakable. And then, for a second split in time, Kylo wonders if it might make him feel better, to break Hux. Maybe, he considers for like, two seconds, and then he would regret it afterwards. He always thought he wanted to do things until he actually did them.

 

"We're finished." Hux says, when Kylo does not reply.

 

It is true. They _are_ finished.

 

They don't especially have any friends they can go to- the Weapon had taken care of that. Most super villains were just a tad, like, a tad, not much, but a _tad_ \- better than mindlessly slaughtering children and civilians. And right let's not even talk about surrendering to that hero league.

 

"We'll rebuild." Kylo finds himself saying, and ignores the disbelief Hux levels him with at the 'we'.

  

 

* * *

 

 

They lie low in a town in England.

 

England is, for lack of another word, _quaint_.

 

Hux, as Kylo should long have figured out from the accent, apparently comes from England.

 

He takes Kylo to a small town in the middle of nowhere, a place with green fields and cottages that he's only really seen before in movies. A _quaint_ sort of place, again.

 

He doesn't know why Hux has chosen here though, really. It doesn't seem like _his_ kind of place. But at least it's a good place to lie low- everything here is slow in a way it never is in cities, hell, even the _internet_ here is slow.

 

He doesn't actually find out why until a woman stops them in a street, and Kylo's hand is already twitching towards his gun (his sword is, sadly, gone), but then she beams and exclaims, in a tone far too loud, "Ben!"

 

He blinks, floored.

 

What.

 

How does.

 

But the woman is, apparently, and well of course- of course, not talking to _him_. She hurries right up to Hux instead, and Kylo only watches, rather stupefied as she tries to embrace him. His companion takes a hurried step back, and clears his throat rather awkwardly.

 

"Hi, Aunt Martha."

 

There's a faint flush riding up his cheeks, and he firmly doesn't look at Kylo.

 

Well. So that happens too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"Ben?" He asks Hux later, a single eyebrow raised in askance.

 

Hux flushes again (he looks ever so pretty when he does that), and says nothing.

 

 

* * *

 

 

So there are the good days. The days when things reach vague normalcy. Not that anything can be normal. But the days when the sense of unreality doesn't seem so unreal, that they can live here and have lived here and there is a feeling neither of knew know how to name.

 

(a definition: contentment, but not quite)

 

And then there are the bad days.

 

They are alone again, the blinds are drawn- they always are, and his companion looks so... empty. Dull. And not for the first time, Kylo thinks that Hux is not meant for this. And reacting to some impulse or other, he reaches out. Touches Hux's cheek. When there is no response, he trails his fingers past the cold skin. Brushes past his eyelids. His lips.

 

Hux trembles, just faintly then, a shudder at his spine, and Kylo takes in a breath- remembers himself, makes to pull back, wonders if this time he has gone too far (again).

 

 _Don't_. He remembers. _Don't_.

 

His hand is caught before it can withdraw back to his side, before he can voice his rasped apology.

 

This time, Hux is the one to pull him in.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He cradles Hux's cheek in his hand, pulls him close and tastes him on his lips. He has imagined this before, pictured this long into the night, but reality is so much sweeter than even the imaginations he could conjure in restless darkness. Hux is cold, so cold, but that's fine because Kylo has enough heat to make up for both of them.

 

And even the impatience eventually gives way, gives way to gentle hands and firm grips.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"I like it here." Kylo says, just the once.

 

Hux, for his credit, doesn't pause in his methodical motions of going through yoga. Apparently, yoga helps. Plus (aunt) Martha had recommended it to them. What it helps _with_ , Kylo has no idea.

 

Instead, the man cranes open an eye, looks at Kylo for a moment before closing it again. He doesn't even reply, utterly unimpressed.

 

Kylo shrugs, before he leaves the room to go for his morning run.

 

Hux only shouts at him not to forget the keys when he's almost out the front door.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Apparently it's a routine now.

 

Kylo goes out running in the morning. Hux practices yoga.

 

They switch turns buying groceries.

 

The woman at the local shop smiles at them and talks to them about the weather. Sometimes she gives them free pastries from the counter.

 

It's... nice.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

There is a ginger cat that likes to wander the streets and doesn't have a collar. Sometimes Kylo buys a can of catfood and leaves it out for the cat on his way back to the house.

 

One time, the cat follows them home.

 

 _It_ is a he, so they call him Mr. Bigglesworth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Two weeks turns into two months.

 

When Hux spots a man in a maroon shirt and a silver watch, following him home (home? when had they started calling it that), it only takes him two minutes to lose him and twenty minutes for them to be gone.

 

It's a reminder that nothing ever lasts.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Nothing lasts that you don't build yourself.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It's not like people eventually catch up with them still, of course. They had only wanted to lie low for awhile, and then somewhere along the line they had stopped thinking about going back.

 

But it wasn't like they could run forever. The shot, when it comes, comes in the middle of the day, in the middle of a crowded square. It takes all of 3 milliseconds for Kylo to realize and toss himself to the ground. It takes all of 3 milliseconds for everything to crumble again.

 

The motions he resume are automatic, instinctive.

 

He ducks into the shadows, recalls too late that Hux isn't here, that Hux is back at their rented motel room and- shit. _Shit_.

  

Panic hammers in his chest. It fills his mouth and his vision, fills everything but his lungs and then he is running.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He doesn't find Hux. He finds broken glass and broken bodies and broken cable lines, and he doesn't find Hux.

 

He stays in the city, for all of two hours, stays long enough to understand that the First Order had come. That they had already left.

 

So Kylo leaves.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Stay with me?" Kylo had asked Hux. Just the once.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Helpless to do anything else, he goes to the designated meet-up point, the one they had agreed upon, if ever one of them went missing or just disappeared one day. It's more common than you might think, so they had agreed on this town what- several months ago?

 

He waits there for three days, and doesn't sleep.

 

At the end of the third day, men dressed in black suits and with black cars arrive, he spots at least one person he used to know who arrives in some getup with (more) black cars and men in black suits (the pale, bald kind with black sunglasses), and he has still seen no sign of Hux.

 

He leaves that town as well.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He finds himself wandering aimlessly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Here is a fact: people tend to either hate Kylo or just not care about him, at all.

 

When he meets Batman for example, one night in the city that is Gotham (he's moved from Europe to America now, left Washington a couple days ago), the man ignores him. Maybe it's because he's in the middle of beating up a bad guy, except not the bad guy Batman is apparently after, so Batman sort of. Just doesn't care. Hell, they even see each other a couple times after that. So since he hasn't exactly been kicked out right away, he ends up staying in Gotham for a couple of weeks more.

 

He sees Bruce Wayne in the streets a couple of times, puts two and two together, and then when he thinks it's time to move on again, he does.

 

Not everyone is exactly as kind as that. However you put kind. Nowadays his definition of kindness is not trying to kill him at first sight.

 

Some people look at him, and their hands find their phones, or their ears, as soon as they think he is not looking. He leaves those towns as quickly as he arrives. In others, he might stay for several days, maybe more than a week. He always leaves.

 

Someone once recognizes him and asks him how he is, what he's been up to- if he's retired already and why they haven't heard much about him in the past year or so. He'll reply with something vague, and move on.

 

Ah right, not everyone is so passive at all either.

 

("Hey, Kyle Lauren!" The red and black clad man yells cheerfully, and shoots Kylo in the goddamn shoulder.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

It takes him a year. A year and a half.

 

He finds Hux in Germany.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"Come with me," Hux tells him.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They start over. Hux with his bio-weapons and chemicals and laboratories, the new blood and the old remnants of his power base, flocking again to him. Kylo is there of course, stood by Hux's side. They start calling him Hux's hound.

 

A hound. Seriously?

 

He has half a mind to complain about that, but Hux seems to like it enough, so he doesn't.

 

They start over, but in time, the rest will follow.

 

'The General' is still a catching title- and unfortunately the 'hound' is one which is catching too, if people's reactions to Kylo are anything to go by. But even as they build, even as they build their influence, to the borders of Germany and then beyond them, beyond to Europe and then to America, Asia- when they build their high tower to the heights of Babel and then beyond, even that name changes.

 

'The Emperor', they begin to say, softly and loud. A whisper that spreads, from a murmur to a clamor, a rumour that is suddenly no longer a rumour. The Emperor and his Knight.

 

It does, Hux agrees, that wry smile on his lips, his fingers snaking to rest in Kylo's hair, have a certain ring to it.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> My Tumblr is [HERE](http://itsakylo.tumblr.com/). @_@ Please feel free to come over and hang out with me! =D?


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